Hakka stories-past lives and 14 Hakka cuisine.

Legend has it that tofu originated in northern jiaozi. Due to the lack of wheat in Lingnan, homesick Hakka immigrants in the Central Plains replaced flour with tofu and stuffed meat into tofu, just like flour wrapped in meat. Sufu is the first course of Hakka people. On holidays or to entertain guests, Hakka people make fermented bean curd. The homonym of "tofu" means "great wealth", which means good luck.

There is also a legend that a Hakka in Xingning and a Hakka in Wuhua became brothers a long time ago. One day, they invited each other to a restaurant for dinner. When ordering, Xingning people want to eat tofu, and Wuhua people want to eat pork. In order not to give in to each other, the two men held their own opinions and quarreled. The restaurant owner intervened and came up with a clever plan: chop the pork, mix it with seasoning, brew it into pieces of tofu, fry both sides of the tofu into golden brown, and then cover the pot to stew. Fermented tofu with good fragrance, color and taste has a smooth and delicious taste. In the same year, they clapped their hands and even said' delicious, delicious'!

Later, Hakka people used similar methods to make Hakka dishes such as bitter gourd, eggplant and green pepper.

2 The origin of brine chicken

Baked chicken with salt is a famous Hakka dish. Hakka people choose local tender chickens, slaughter them, remove their internal organs and dry them in the sun. Then wrap the whole chicken in straw paper coated with a little cooking oil, stuff it into the fried hot salt pile and bake it for about half an hour with low fire. Take it out and tear it into shredded pork slices, put it on a plate and serve it, then add ginger juice, sesame oil and other seasonings. The skin is soft and tender, fragrant and delicious, and it has a warming effect. There is a legend about its origin:

Once upon a time, there was a Hakka businessman who accepted a fat chicken from a friend. The merchant planned to take it home for his wife and children to taste, but it was a long way and it was not easy to carry live chickens, so he slaughtered the chickens and made them into white-cut chickens, wrapped them in salt and bagged them. Unexpectedly, on the way home, he was in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to eat. When he was hungry, he took the cooked chicken out of the salt bag and roasted it. Unexpectedly, he found that the chicken made in this way was very delicious. The businessman left a few pieces to take home for his wife and children to taste. After the wife tasted it, she cooked it according to law, and "brine chicken" was born.

3 The Legend of Braised Pork with Plum Vegetables

Plum cuisine is a traditional Hakka specialty. Golden color, sweet and refreshing, neither cold nor dry nor wet nor hot. It is called "healthy food", and it is made of plum vegetables, pork belly and seasonings. "Braised pork with plum vegetables" has a long reputation. It is said that brine chicken and Sufu are the three treasures of Hakka.

There is also a wonderful legend about "braised pork with plum vegetables": During the Northern Song Dynasty, when Su Dongpo lived in Huizhou, he specially sent two famous chefs to Hangzhou West Lake to learn cooking skills. After the two chefs came back, Su Dongpo asked them to imitate the "Dongpo Braised Pork" of Hangzhou West Lake and make "Braised Pork with Plum Vegetables". Delicious, refreshing and not greasy, it was very popular and soon became a delicious dish at the banquet.

4 Hakka meatballs

Hakka people love to eat meatballs, which are both snacks and home-cooked dishes. Hakka people mainly use the homonym of "pill" and "circle", which means reunion and perfection. Meatballs are divided into pork balls, fish balls, beef balls and beef tendon balls due to different materials. It is characterized by pure taste, maintaining the original meat taste, crispness and toughness.

According to historical records, since the late Jin Dynasty, many Han people in the Central Plains moved south, forming an early Hakka clan. Later, some Han people continued to move eastward to Fujian or southward to Guangdong. In order to escape from the war in the Central Plains, the Hakkas suffered from migration, yearned for peace and prosperity, longed for family reunion and enjoyed peace forever, and specially made a kind of flavor food with outstanding local characteristics and strong festive colors, that is, round Hakka meatballs.

5 Hakka zhuduji

Braised chicken is an important dish for Hakka people to entertain distinguished guests, and it is also a home-cooked dish for Hakka people. It is said that a long time ago, the daughter-in-law of a large family just gave birth to a baby, and her grandmother made supplements for her every day, but she just lost her appetite, became thinner and thinner, and lacked milk. So her husband invited a chef to cook for her, and the chef found that she loved to eat pork belly in pepper pot. Later, the chef finally came up with a good idea. He put the chicken in the pork belly and added herbs to make soup. Sure enough, her appetite was wide open and her condition improved. Later, the neighbors did the same, and this dish has been spread among Hakka people since then.

6 the origin of dried plums.

Dried plum is a traditional Hakka dish, which is made of fresh plums through drying, selecting and pickling. Golden color, sweet and refreshing, neither cold nor dry, neither wet nor hot, can be used as meat condiments such as braised pork with plum, steamed pork ribs with plum, and dried plum soup. There is a story about the origin of dried plums.

Once upon a time, there was a lady Lu in the place where a Hakka lived. She came from a big family, knowledgeable and kind-hearted, but later her family came down. Mrs. Lu has five children. Because of the war and famine, her life is getting worse and worse, and she often has three meals. One day, she was washing clothes by the river. The children were hungry and crying for food. Mrs. Lu couldn't help crying. In a trance, a breeze blew and a colorful cloud floated in. I saw a fairy empress standing in front of me, claiming to be Aunt Mei, and happened to pass by and asked Mrs. Lu why she was sad. After asking the reason, Mei Xiangu took out a bag of things and said, "Here is a bag of rapeseed. You can use it to sow and harvest before the Spring Festival! Can alleviate your urgent needs! " Say it and leave. Mrs. Lu took the rapeseed and quickly kowtowed to Xiangu.

So, Mrs. Lu sowed rape in the garden, worked hard and soon grew green seedlings. After the autumn harvest, she planted them in a lot of rice fields. In a blink of an eye, it was the twelfth lunar month, the harvest season, and the food was collected and done. Sweet and tender, the children had a full meal and enjoyed themselves. When the harvested vegetables were inedible, Mrs. Lu tried to cut them down and dry them, salted them and stored them in clay pots, then steamed them, dried them and dried them. Dried vegetables are golden yellow, shiny and fragrant. During the Chinese New Year, Mrs. Lu took out plum vegetables and stewed them with pork. They are fresh, sweet, delicious and have a unique flavor. When relatives and friends asked what it was, Mrs. Lu thought for a moment and said, "It's a vegetable seed from Sister Mei. Let's call it prune. "

7 Tai Po bamboo shoots

For thousands of years, jiaozi, as a New Year's food, has been loved by people and spread to this day. During the Spring Festival, people eat jiaozi, which means good luck to show that they will bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.

Hakka ancestors moved from the Central Plains to the south to settle down. They also brought the eating habits of the Central Plains, and always included "jiaozi" on holidays. But when they settled in the south, wheat was not produced locally, so they could not get the flour packaged in jiaozi. Clever Hakkas make starch dough from locally grown sweet potatoes and roots, and make bamboo sticks shaped like "jiaozi" from local abundant bamboo shoots, mushrooms and meat. As a festive New Year greeting food, bamboo sticks have long been a prestigious Hakka snack.

8 Tai Po Ziyi Hairpin

There is a sad story about the name of Tai Po seafood. According to legend, in the Ming Dynasty, there was a family somewhere in Tai Po. The mother's name is Aunt Song, and her son, Agan, is superb in martial arts. She worked as a sailor under Zheng Chenggong, traveled across the sea to Taiwan Province Province, wiped out the enemy, got rid of violence and never came home. Aunt Song misses her son. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, she will make a son's favorite hairpin and put it under the moon to miss her son. I went to Qiu Lai in the spring and waited for 30 years. On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, my son suddenly came back. Aunt Song brought her son's favorite hairpin, and Ah Gen took it from her mother to celebrate the reunion, hence the name "Ziyibang".

9 big cloth cake

Tai Po cake is a traditional food in Tai Po with a history of more than 200 years. According to legend, during the reign of Emperor Qianlong of Qing Dynasty, Bai Houyang of Tai Po, who served as a provincial judge in Shaanxi, went home to celebrate his mother's birthday. In memory of my mother, I took my waiter and chef back to Tai Po to hold a birthday party for the villagers. Among them, there is a snack "pancake", which I never thought my mother liked very much. Yang Zuanxu's personal leave has arrived, and she wants to go back to Shaanxi. In order to make her mother eat pancakes for a long time, she asked the chef to stay and let him teach the local villagers how to cook pancakes before returning to her post. Since then, the technology of making pancakes has spread among the people of Baihou in Tai Po, and the Hakka people in Tai Po have continuously improved and changed their tastes in combination with the rich local raw materials, and evolved into today's flavor snacks.

10 Tai Po enterprise cake

According to legend 100 years ago, there was a man named Zhong in Taining, Chayang, dapu county, Meizhou. He went to Chayang all the year round to sell agricultural products to make a living for his family. In order to save money for lunch, he always treats his own cakes as dry food and never tires of eating them. One day, the old clock had a whim. Why not make more cakes by the way? Maybe others like it as much as I do. So, he really did a lot. He chose Chayang to go to the fair and sold it at the fair. It was named "Enterprise Oil Cake", which was both oily and sugar, and the price was cheap. Sure enough, the enterprise cake was very popular as soon as it was listed. Old Zhong, who tasted the sweetness, switched to the enterprise oil cake business. When his son grew up, he inherited his father's business and then his son's business. Now that the enterprise oil cake has spread to the fourth generation, the technology has naturally been greatly improved and improved, and it has become a shining star in Tai Po cuisine.

1 1 Yongding taro buns

There is a folk saying that "eat taro buns and get rich with silver and gold". Taro steamed stuffed bun is a Hakka snack. It is a kind of steamed stuffed bun made of taro and cassava flour, and its making method is simple. Generally, large and perishable taro is washed, cooked in a pot with skin, peeled, mashed (rotten) into taro paste in the pot, added with appropriate amount of cassava flour and refined salt, and rolled into steamed stuffed bun skin with a rolling pin. The stuffing is made of lean meat, Lentinus edodes, shredded winter bamboo shoots (or dried bamboo shoots), shrimps, shredded radish, scallion and other materials, which are chopped, added with refined salt and monosodium glutamate, stir-fried and filtered out to obtain the stuffing.

After the taro is wrapped, put it in a steamer with gauze and steam it on high fire for 15 minutes, and the aroma is fragrant. At this time, take out the pot and add spices such as sesame oil. A plate of steaming, delicious taro buns is ready. Taro buns can be eaten by steaming, boiling, frying, frying and other cooking methods, and have a unique taste.

There is also a short story about "taro to satisfy hunger" circulating in Hakka areas in western Fujian: in ancient times, there was a temple monk who specialized in planting taro and earned a lot of money every year. He built a wall with mud, and then he was hungry. More than forty monks in this temple ate taro mud and survived that tragic time. It can be seen that taro is a good thing and a treasure in the mountains. However, while eating miscellaneous grains, the clever and capable Hakkas constantly change their tastes, change the way of eating taro, update the cooking mode of taro, and entertain guests with taro cooking dishes, so they cook a kind of rural food-taro buns in their daily lives. In the past, taro and sweet potato were the main staple crops of Hakka families in mountain villages. The agricultural proverb says that "sweet potato and taro are the food for half a year", which can be used as both vegetables and meals.

In Hakka areas in western Fujian, every household will make taro buns on holidays, especially on New Year's Eve, which tastes special. Not only does it have the meaning of "gold wrapped in silver", but the scene of the whole family getting together to wrap taro is full of affection and warmth!

12 denglang fine wine

Once upon a time, there was a couple somewhere in Hakka. They are full of love, kindness and charity. They lived a carefree life by making wine, but they had no children after several years of marriage. One day, my husband went out to deliver wine. On the way back, he saw an abandoned baby girl crying sadly and took her home. His wife is also a kind-hearted person, who just leaves her job to wash the baby girl. The washed baby girl has dark eyes, which is very pleasing. At this time, a pot of fragrant wine was brewed. The couple are very happy. They put the wine in a jar and store it in the cellar. The couple discussed that if they had children in the future, they would let the baby girl be their daughter-in-law. If you can't have children, take her as your daughter. This pot of wine is for your son and daughter-in-law to get married, or for your daughter to get married. Maybe God was moved by the kindness of the couple. Two years later, the couple had a baby, and the little girl was cute. She learned to make wine when she was seven or eight years old, and the wine made by herself was delicious. Many guests from afar come to buy "Langmei Wine". Since then, this family has flourished.

18 years later, the couple married their son and daughter-in-law and invited their neighbors to a banquet. The wine stored for 18 years is more fragrant, and a famous folk singer improvised a folk song:

Since then, the couple's kindness has become a much-told story. It is said that the title of "Waiting for Langmei" was handed down from then on, and the custom of Hakka people adopting "Waiting for Langmei" began from then on.

13 The Legend of Azzan

Hakkas have a traditional custom, that is, in spring, they knead wormwood and glutinous rice flour into "mugs" to offer sacrifices to gods and entertain guests. According to Compendium of Materia Medica, Folium Artemisiae Argyi is used as medicine, which is warm in nature, bitter in taste, non-toxic, pure in yang, and has the effects of restoring yang, regulating qi and blood, eliminating dampness and dispelling cold, stopping bleeding and preventing miscarriage. Therefore, Hakkas like to eat fresh and tender wormwood, and the weather is wet during Qingming Festival. Eating wormwood can dispel dampness and warm up. Wormwood is not only used for eating, but also hung in front of the door to ward off evil spirits. Children taking a bath with wormwood boiling water can also prevent sores. There is another legend about Izan:

A long time ago, in the early spring of one year, a Donghai dragon escaped from the Crystal Palace and ran amok outside. He went to Zijin in Hakka area to make waves. Strong winds blew down houses and trees, floods washed away crops and land, evil waves overturned ships, and dragons devoured people and animals. The people are miserable and complain a lot. On February 19, Guanyin Bodhisattva passed by here and saw that the dragon was lawless. Guanyin became a kind old woman and explained this to the local people. According to Guanyin's instructions, people quickly made hairpins from mugwort leaves and glutinous rice flour for relatives and friends to taste. People who have eaten mugwort will give off a smell that scares dragons. Every household will also put plates of mugs on the table in front of the screen, or hang them high to let the fragrance of mugwort spread slowly. In addition, incense sticks were lit and firecrackers were set off. People come and go, people are buzzing, and it is very lively. The dragon was stunned by the smell of mugwort leaves, half dead, and had never seen such a boiling scene. He was terrified out of his wits and fled back to the sea, never daring to make a move again.

14 Anecdotes of Polygonum in Xingning

"Polygonum flower" is a famous pastry in Xingning county, which is called "the flower in the cake". /kloc-More than 0/00 years ago, "Polygonum multiflorum Thunb" was exported to Singapore, Malaysia and other places in Southeast Asia. "Polygonum flower" pays attention to shape, color and taste. Looks like a melon, but inside looks like a melon pulp, crisp and sweet. The requirements for material selection and manufacturing process are very high. Speaking of Polygonum, there is an interesting story.

Zhu Zhishan, a gifted scholar in the south of the Yangtze River, is a magistrate in Xingning. One day, I really wanted to eat the famous glutinous rice cake in my hometown, so I invited a pastry chef named Chen to dictate the making method of glutinous rice cake and asked Master Chen to do it. However, Master Chen did not completely follow the recipes he taught, but combined with the characteristics of Hakka dim sum making, made another unique food with glutinous rice, taro, sesame seeds, sugar and other raw materials. Zhu Zhishan is crisp and fragrant, crisp and sweet, with good color, fragrance and taste. He couldn't help praising Master Chen for his superb skills and doubling his salary. He personally named the cake "Liao Hua". Since then, the reputation of "Polygonum multiflorum Thunb" has spread in Hakka area, and gradually spread to domestic and foreign countries.